APOD 4.8

The Last Launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour (2011 May 18)

This picture was taken of the Endeavour after it took off. There were six astronauts aboard and was on its way to the International Space Station. Part of it's mission is to deliver to the ISS special equipment which includes a detector called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer 2. This is supposed to be able to detect a significant abundace of specific types of dark matter, charged, antimatter, and maybe strange variations of familiar matter called strangelets. This is the second to last launch. The last launch is currently scheduled for mid-July when Atlantis will also be launched to go to the space station. This was very interesting to see the picture and the follow-up video in the links. I was actually able to see the trail of smoke that the shuttle left behind during the launch after it disappeared in a cloud. This was the first time I actually observed something like this.